A Household type A-Lamp (
Edison lamp) is a
filament incandescent lamp the same as any
stage lighting lamp. Only difference is that it doesn’t have the extra gasses in it to make it have the
halogen effect. Otherwise it’s the same basic lamp design and will work on any
dimmer.
That said, you might have to add a ghost loading to your
dimmer by way of
fixture backstage somewhere to make the
fixture work properly on the
dimmer if not enough resistance loading is appied to the dimmers. Many if not most dimmers require at least a 75
Watt loading on them to function properly. A 25w lamp could work fine but not shut off, or do all sorts of strange non-off/on type of stuff. Add a load to the
circuit and all should be fine. (Dependant upon the
dimmer used but overall a safe plan.)
Normally you want any lamps without
safety screens or lenses in front of them to be either caged or “
safety coated”. This would be a Teflon or Silicone coating over the surface area of the lamp. Kind of a cool thing - break the lamp, all the glass is retained within the coating. Many lamps are available with this coating on them (gives it a sort of frosted lamp appearance) or many suppliers of lamps can either dip them or get them dipped for you. Also McMaster sells “Colored Light
Bulb Covers” which is a silicone lamp
cover that slips on over the glass of the lamp in coloring it. This would also fulfill the need for protecting those on
stage from the potential of hot falling glass from the overhead.
All it takes is one
drop hitting the lamp or one kid screwing around on
stage and you now have someone missing an eye and a tremendous lawsuit. It’s highly recommended that you don’t just use some un-coated or protected lamp overhead. That said, a rock tour with 24 of them leaves in the morning. The designer specified the lamp to be used and as long as I warn the production about the lack of protection on the in this case A-21 silver bowl lamps, liability is not with the supplier of the gear, it lies with the
production manager and designer who specified and approved of the gear given a prior knowledge of my concerns as a representative of the equipment supplier for the tour. (This as a theory at least.)
Ikea does make a decent lamp
socket, but for all intensive purposes, it’s nothing more than a
clip light socket with the clip and
reflector removed.
There is all sorts of lamp sockets with cable attached to them on the market, someone else mentioned lamp stringers as an option - with or without the cages. There is types of lamp sockets that can clip into the wires feeding them, others that have exposed terminals needing a box around them, and others that are weather tight but need to be crimped to a cable. Lots of solutions, need to refine what specifically you are looking for in concept - just a lamp
socket hanging from a
cord or a lamp with lamp
socket and box around it hanging from a
cord.
A week ago I made two 60" on center 24 lamp "stringers" as similar to the construction light stringers but using lamp sockets that
crimp themselves onto the
wire where you wish. Two 140' pieces of #12 type MTW
wire (grey and black) that was secured to the building on one end, the other end was put in the chuck of my drill. Spun the conductors around and around until both conductors wound around themselves and would tend to stay that way without un-winding. Than it was just a question of marking every five feet and installing the self piercing and protected terminals on the lamp bases onto the conductors. Not a huge fan of this type of lamp
base, it at times won't pierce the
wire properly (self piercing terminals also both damage conductors and can be high resistance) and are fairly brittle lamp sockets by way of breaking.
Other options would be doing
line splices and splicing the
wire from lamp sockets into the
power lines - challenge for that would be most lamp sockets use 16ga to 18ga
wire and while that's fine for a single lamp, it's hard to
crimp such small
wire into a 12 or 10ga cable feeding a lot of them. This short of a vulconizing machine and a few other techniques that would be hard to do. Another option in using weather tight sockets with two
wire leads off the molded lamp housing would be to
crimp to a cable than protect the conductors and crimps from abuse. It's also done but due to how weather tight lamp sockets are constructed, also difficult to make in some way compliant with code or for
stage a very heavy duty
rating. Construction sockets and some commercial types are available and for the most part for stringers of many lamps on a chain of them the best solution.
Construction sockets are normally yellow but can be painted with plastic painting spray paint, or in black
thru theater supplier sources.
A few years back I made a few 40' three
circuit "Stringers" (Three circuits for more lamps on a 20 amp
circuit and for doing chases.) They had lamps 18" on center with all six 10ga MTW conductors twisted around each other and a 1/8" vinyl coated
wire rope core. The
wire rope terminated in some welded rings for supporting the cable runs. The bundle of conductors were also inserted into a 5/8" fiberglass sleeve for further protection. That's a
stringer to an extreme.
There could be other things you have in mind on the other
hand not expressed. Could be the individual lamp sockets (
clove hitch and tape the cords to the rigging), could be a
stringer. Otherwise it could be more elaborate as not explained in say a chunk of the ceiling having fallen out and it's now a part of the set decoration.
For one show I did a
C-Clamp mounted box that spliced a
Edison cable into a piece of BX (AC) flexible
conduit and had suspended from it a ceiling box with
porcelain lamp holder.
The BX and ceiling box were grounded by way of isolated
ground wire run to the suspended box. Both the ceiling box and BX were supported by a piece of vinyl coated
wire rope that was run with the conductors inside the BX and secured to each of the boxes so as to
pick up the tension on the BX. BX cable and box plus lamp holder were distressed so as to make look old and really bad looking - there was even a simulated piece of
lath attached plaster was affixed to the hanging down lamp
socket with lamp so as to help the simulation of a light
socket that had literally fallen out of the ceiling.
Get someone familiar and trained if not a electrician to
wire this thing up. There is details like the
neutral to the shell and use of polorized plugs that must be followed in being safe. Might seem simple enough but it’s not in making it safe and proper.